Vietnam War veteran races time to honor San Jose men

These guys won't be with us much longer. We hear that every Veterans Day when reporters show up at the annual parade, when kids sing before old soldiers in nursing homes, and when their comrades at the veterans hall salute every man or woman who ever carried a rifle into battle.

Well, that sad future has come and gone for thousands of vets since last year's Veterans Day.

It came during the summer for Carl Horvitz of Palo Alto, an Army photographer during World War II. And it could come soon for Frank Lopez, a terminally ill Vietnam vet who wants to make sure all the San Jose boys who died in that war are remembered here at home.

Horvitz and his camera were at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, at the Battle of Luzon in the Philippines, and on the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered. I had heard about him months ago, made a mental note to call.

"I'm sorry I can't be of much help," Ann Horvitz told me when I finally did. "He died on Aug. 23rd."

Like most World War II vets, Horvitz rarely talked about his experiences. Tidbits would come out: Village natives gave him raw eggs to cure his dysentery; leeches and maggots stuck to his legs during battle.

"He didn't go out and make speeches, nothing like that," his widow said. "He just didn't talk about the war much. It's an ugly thing, it really is."

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Horvitz eventually put away his camera and became a prominent Realtor in Palo Alto and philanthropist for Jewish causes, including donating to the new Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto.

What about the photographs?

Ann Horvitz said most of them were lost when a duffle bag filled with them fell from his shoulders when his transport came under attack.

"It was either him or the duffle bag," his widow said.

Only a handful of other photographs remain around the house, some that she discovered this week while sorting through his boxes. These, which she had never seen, depict the Battle of Luzon. His widow said her husband was never interested in exhibiting his photos or capitalizing on them after the war.

"That wasn't for him," she said. "He was a quiet, simple man. And when he came home, he went on with life. He didn't dwell on it."

Then she mentioned a fellow Army photographer who knew her husband. She heard he's in a nursing home in Arizona. Maybe he could provide details about her husband's war years?

"Even if you could find him," she said, "it might be too late."

Meanwhile, Lopez, a Marine in the Vietnam War, is in his own race against time to thank and remember all of the 143 San Jose boys who died there. He wants to build a monument just for them.

"War is bad, but worse is forgetting their names," he said at his South San Jose home.

He's only 62 but he is running out of time. His internal organs -- kidneys, pancreas, liver and heart are shutting down. He's lost a foot to diabetes.

"I coded out twice at the hospital," he said, meaning that he basically died on the table but was revived by doctors. "Agent Orange," he explained.

During his tour in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, Lopez drank water from village wells contaminated by the toxic herbicide the military used to clear huge swaths of jungle and grasslands.

As a member of a special Marine unit assigned to protect villages from attack, he learned to speak Vietnamese, celebrated their holidays, got to know the villagers personally.

On Jan. 7, 1968, North Vietnamese Army regulars overran his village, Nguc Noc. What was left of his unit fled into the hills, where they waged guerrilla warfare against the NVA for weeks until reinforcements arrived. When the Marines recaptured Nguc Noc, Lopez had to decide who among the wounded villagers could be saved and who couldn't.

"I was only 19 and there I was doing triage."

That was enough of war for him. He returned to San Jose, married, started a family, got a factory job that paid $85 a week. But he just wasn't right. The nightmares were unbearable. "I missed the ambushes," the thrill of attacking the enemy at night.

He had the fortitude to graduate from San Jose State, become a high school teacher and coach, but the nightmares came back with a vengeance in 1998, when he began teaching English and science to immigrant Vietnamese students at Andrew Hill High School. Their innocent faces and voices sent him back to the battle of Nguc Noc.

Thirty years after leaving the war, Lopez finally reported to a veterans hospital, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Why didn't he ask for help earlier?

"I'm a Marine!" he said.

During group therapy sessions, he heard about Vietnam War memorials in Milpitas, Santa Clara and other Silicon Valley towns. San Jose didn't have one, so in 2006, he started collecting the names of every city boy who died in Vietnam. He created a nonprofit foundation to build a memorial, "Sons of San Jose." It would be a smaller version of the national memorial, a black, granite wall shaped like a tank trap and inscribed with the names of those killed.

Lopez started by going to San Jose high schools and asking about who was drafted or volunteered, and for yearbook pictures. He cross-checked names with the national Vietnam Memorial. He tracked down most of their families to verify personal information. It took him almost three years.

He's still looking for the family of Robert S. Masuda, who is listed as missing in action. Masuda, Lopez learned, was killed when his unit was defending the perimeter. He believes Masuda's remains can be found in a well that was booby-trapped.

Lopez pitched his ideas for a memorial to civic and veterans groups and individuals. He said he raised about $20,000 by June, when his health deteriorated, forcing him to step down as president of the memorial foundation. By then, he had recruited others to help, and they say they are close to their $160,000 goal.

The American GI Forum, a Latino veteran's group, will have him ride in the organization's car in the city's Veterans Day parade today.

Lopez has decided against extraordinary measures to keep him alive the next time he codes. Meanwhile, he's writing a memoir of his war years and the aftermath, and still works on the memorial.

"I know it's a war we lost," he said. "I just don't want them to die in vain. Their families and the rest of us should be able to remember them in a better way."